The TV and Streaming Thread: Pilot Week

[Raithe]

‘Babylon 5’ Reboot Still “Very Much In Active Development”, the CW CEO Confirms – Deadline

 

[Zoraptor]

Strange New Worlds Ep3- I think I've seen enough to say that if this series had been done in isolation from Discovery and Picard I'd be pretty happy. It's really hamstrung by the expectation that everything will inevitably become awful though.

Spoiler

The episode itself is mostly fine, and based on a pretty common ST trope; but it's a trope because it works well. Genetically engineered colony disappears, what has happened to them and why are the away team showing some odd symptoms? OMG, it's a light virus! Shenanigans ensue.

Yeah, the premise is kind of lol in that there's an ion storm and of course it effects the transporters- who could have predicted this?- but the plot is OK and would make a decent but not overly memorable S2 episode of TNG, much like the rest of the episodes. OTOH, all the Trek problems are still on display. There's pointless action, hand wavey explanations and more giving characters traumatic/ dramatic backgrounds- two this time; Mystique actress plays genetically engineered character, hasn't told anyone, though if you're going to do genetically engineered Rebecca Romijn is a good pick; Doctor has his daughter stuffed in the closet medical emergency transporter buffer as she has a terminal illness. Tune in next week to find out that Nurse Chapel's parents are nazis and the pilot got traumatised by clowns at a birthday party when she has to meet some new aliens with oversized feet and red noses, since they are now the only two without some sort of angst inducement machine. Also, while relevant in context there was more than a little bit of "like covid, get it, we're alluding to events in current year earth, did you notice? Did you? Can we make it more obvious, if so how?" about how the virus was handled.

Looks like there's a theme of genetic engineering developing too, what with a Noonien Singh and gen-enged 1st Officer. I have great faith that this will be handled well. When have these writers ever let me down?

I also watched the Halo TV series, because... I'm not quite sure. One of the oddest televisual experiences I've had, really.

Spoiler

Half of it was exactly as expected, a run of the mill space opera replete with logic holes and the other half was a completely disconnected story about a girl trying to liberate her planet from Burn Gorman- playing yet another bad guy, guess it's just his face to quote The Expanse, going above and beyond in the cause of chewing the scenery- and his 50 gestapo officers who were seemingly enough to rule said planet. Then, it was like they decided that that storyline sucked, but they'd started so they had to finish it. The kindest thing I can say was that it made no sense and was sufficiently eye roll inducing cringe that it kept me watching to see how bad it could get- and it got bad.

The big functional problem was a complete inability to marry the supposed scale of things with the apparent scale of things. The guy who was literally ruling a planet got driven in his black Zil wearing a Gauleiter's uniform to meet up with maybe a couple of dozen of guys to go kill the girl and her Han Solo analogue instead of... using a ship to level the area, or sending in hundreds of troops while staying back or really anything else. You've got the spartan squad of 4 doing everything important. People escape from big UNSC base multiple times, big UNSC base doesn't seem to have any defences except in the first episode. You're told everything is on epic scale and shown some visuals, but everything feels small.

Strange as it may seem its greatest strengths- such as they were- was the actual A plot which more or less worked. The action itself was kind of boring and had very little in the way of weight to it, but I'd suspect would be better received by fans of the games. The overall impression though is that they got an order for 9 episodes but only had a story for ~5.5, so just handwaved in a B plot to make up the numbers. In the end it was just good enough to be disappointing.

Overall, not as good as Forward unto Dawn which I rather liked in a pulp scifi way. But there is some potential there. I don't regret the time spent watching it, but would not recommend.

[kirottu]

9 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Strange New Worlds Ep3- I think I've seen enough to say that if this series had been done in isolation from Discovery and Picard I'd be pretty happy. It's really hamstrung by the expectation that everything will inevitably become awful though.

Please have hope and watch every episode so I don't have to.

[LadyCrimson]

Binged 10 episodes, over the past couple days, of Who Rules the World via Netflix. It's a sorta-wuxia period/fantasy.

Like many (lengthy) C-Dramas, it's hard to judge whether I'm going to like it before then, because of the way they draw things out and how long it can take them to actually introduce/set up/get familiar with all the main players and all the plot threads in the tale. For a (highish but not US) TV budget it looks very good most of the time, although occasionally there's some obvious CGI. Once the chrs/politics are in there, it's "deeper" then it looks, although the many-factions/kingdom/royal siblings in turmoil is nothing really new. The romance is so far understated but also quite present.

Most importantly, it has lots of wire-fu, cloth-ribbon-fu, knife-fu, water-walking/flying-fu, and any other kind of "fu" you can think of. It's not true wuxia tho, just saying. And they fast-cut a little too often. But the actors do a lot of wire work, it's not just CGI.
Also - I get to stare at Yang Yang, who is one of, if not the most, handsome C-drama actors of his generation.   

Anyway...I'm not sure if I'll last 40 episodes but the first 10 makes me think I'll continue to watch it in 2 episode segments for a while. It's engaging enough for a C-drama.

Edited May 20, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[InsaneCommander]

3 hours ago, kirottu said:

Please have hope and watch every episode so I don't have to.

[Sarex]

Love, death & robots, season 3 is back to it's over the top and gruesome form. Very strange how they did the split between s2 and s3. Either way if you liked s1 you will like s3.

[uuuhhii]

32 minutes ago, Sarex said:

Love, death & robots, season 3 is back to it's over the top and gruesome form. Very strange how they did the split between s2 and s3. Either way if you liked s1 you will like s3.

that giant crab looks so good

[majestic]

Strange New Worlds, episode three.

If I put this to the usual test I have for other nuTrek material, and that is asking myself "Is watching this better than driving rusty nails through my scrotum?", then this episode managed to get a yes as as an answer, a distinction so far only extended to the ludicrous and over the top mirror universe episodes of Discovery and perhaps Picard's second season opener, although my impression of the latter is marred by how that broke into a raging dumpster fire immediately afterward. That wasn't half bad, even if it feels like a rehash of a whole lot of elements we've seen before. Some of the dialogue was more in line with older Trek shows, some of it wasn't (please stop using the "Any suggestions? Run!" 'joke'), much like the crew behaviour - no way the doctor wouldn't tell someone else about his little transporter issue.

Not all was good, the handwavium was strong in this one, a lot stronger than in others, and I am tired of evryone having a tragic backstory. I also hate this Nurse Chapel and the fact that they had the brilliant idea to put a (very) distant relative of Khan Noonien Singh on the ship who still carries his name, but what can you do. The acting got a little less wooden too, or maybe that was because I set the playback to double speed again.

Not the worst way to waste twenty minutes a week, I guess. Many a lot better ones too, though.

I await the turning point with bated breath. And a handful of rusty nails.

Edited May 20, 2022 by majestic

[LadyCrimson]

4 hours ago, Sarex said:

Either way if you liked s1 you will like s3.

That's hopeful. It's not like I disliked the 2nd season, it just wasn't as good as the first.

I did take a break from c-drama-fu last night to watch the first episode of the new season (those two talky robots). I didn't like that one all that much, it was way too "obvious" and for me, not funny or meaningful or something either. But I fell asleep before watching any more - I'll try some more soon.

Edited May 21, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Lexx]

8 hours ago, Sarex said:

Love, death & robots, season 3 is back to it's over the top and gruesome form. Very strange how they did the split between s2 and s3. Either way if you liked s1 you will like s3.

I dunno. Bingewatched it yesterday but most episodes didn't really do much for me. Liked the robots and the crab, the swarm thing was also not bad. Rats was ok though I find it weird that the rats didn't care their genocide was done by the guy in the first place ... etc.

Personally I think s1 is still the best. From s2 I actually can't remember any episode.

[uuuhhii]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

I dunno. Bingewatched it yesterday but most episodes didn't really do much for me. Liked the robots and the crab, the swarm thing was also not bad. Rats was ok though I find it weird that the rats didn't care their genocide was done by the guy in the first place ... etc.

Personally I think s1 is still the best. From s2 I actually can't remember any episode.

most episode in season 1 are not that impressive

but the season start and finish with 2 very good episode certainly help reception

the main strength of the show are variety

so binge through more episode will likely feels better

[Lexx]

Just watched this Bubble anime on Netflix. Visually it's nice, but the story was dumb. 

[HoonDing]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

 anime

 

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

the story was dumb. 

[Lexx]

The story in anime isn't always dumb. But in this case, so much of the setting just didn't made any sense at all.

[LadyCrimson]

Love, Death and Robots, imo:

--episode 2 was meh, although that crab thing was ok as a horror image I guess.
--episode 3 was meh. Interesting idea in a way, but execution for a short was *shrug*
--episode 4 was stupid but hilarious in a low brow/viral Youtube sort of way, thus I liked it. I also liked the stop motion look (dunno if it was or just CGI, but I liked the look)
--episode 5 was also hilarious in an over-the-top uber violent way but hilarity was the only reason I liked it?
--episode 6 was ... well the ending of it made me think of certain "ewww" moments in Starship Troopers and a couple other old sci-fi/horror movies, and visually it was nice to look at, but felt lifeless outside of that.

...haven't gotten to the last three yet.

5 hours ago, Lexx said:

Just watched this Bubble anime on Netflix. Visually it's nice, but the story was dumb. 

That's in my watchlist. The visuals from the trailer don't make me go "zowie" (they're fine, just not special for me) ... does this mean I should I remove it?  

Edited May 21, 2022 by LadyCrimson

[Bartimaeus]

12 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

That's in my watchlist. The visuals from the trailer don't make me go "zowie" (they're fine, just not special for me) ... does this mean I should I remove it?  

Depends on whether you trust majestic or Lexx's and Sarex's tastes in anime better, . majestic thought the visuals were mostly bad but liked the characters and story, .

[majestic]

You guys really need to give episode titles when talking about Love, Death and Robots, that show has user-specific episode orders on Netflix based on your watching history and ratings.

55 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

That's in my watchlist. The visuals from the trailer don't make me go "zowie" (they're fine, just not special for me) ... does this mean I should I remove it?  

In my opinion*, no, but I'm also the only one here who actually enjoyed watching the film. It's basically a retelling of The Little Mermaid (the fairy tale, not the Disney film) in a post-apocalyptic hellscape where gravity no longer works the way it should, and kids do the obvious with that, weird parkour running. I guess that can stretch credulity a little, but it's just the backdrop. The film really hits you over the head with the fact that it is a retelling of The Little Mermaid, which I thought was distracting, but your mileage may vary.

Gen Urobuchi seems to really like heavy handed exposition. That's two for two of the things he wrote that I've watched where an instance of exposition proved distracting, but not completely dealbreaking.

42 minutes ago, Bartimaeus said:

Depends on whether you trust majestic or Lexx's and Sarex's tastes in anime better, . majestic thought the visuals were mostly bad but liked the characters and story, .

Yeah, I gave the 3D animation parts in it a slight nod insofar as that it didn't feel completely uncanny all the time and thought it was a case where the otherwise highly distracing and uncanny attempts to generate depth with CGI kind of worked better than usual.

*Disclaimer: We also watched a film in the anime thread where the protagonist turns into a car (literally) near the end and drives off into the sunset with the deuteragonist while a medieval castle is chasing them on the highway and though it made perfect sense. So, take that with a grain of salt.

Edited May 22, 2022 by majestic

[LadyCrimson]

3 minutes ago, majestic said:

You guys really need to give episode titles when talking about Love, Death and Robots, that show has user-specific episode orders on Netflix based on your watching history and ratings.

Oh, was that the show that did that? I remember a show doing that but y'know me and my long term (or short term, or any term) memory.

Well, in short, so far I've liked two intentionally over the top humorous ones (except the three robots post-apoc. episode) and the rest have been "ok to meh."  

[Lexx]

My problem with the story is that it just made no damn sense. So there is a bubble now -- that part is fine. People are leaving the area -- ok, that is fine. Kids arrive and hold tournaments in the bubble and to participate in that they share their food ressources, but everyone is very civil about it and in a way they are all kinda friends anyways... eh. Then later

someone gets kidnapped and they play a game about it and everyone is totally fine with this, as if it's the most normal thing in the world. In a match before it was shown that the enemies are very strong and use cheat-y methods to win, but the group of our hero doesn't care, they haven't learned anything from the past experience and just do the same thing as usual, expecting a different outcome. In the end, the only reason they win is because the story needs them to win.. there was no logic behind it.

All in all it felt stupid. Guess it's primarily for a much younger audience and people who like Hunger Games or something. I'm too old for this.

[LadyCrimson]

Long live James Hong. That's all.

 

[Amentep]

Picard "The Impossible Box" and "Nepenthe"

First episode was dull, and a good example of how the Soji storyline was treading water and adding nothing to the overall story.  By the time we get here, we know how its going to play out, there's no surprise in the episode.  I can't help but feel the story would have been better without the viewer knowing what to expect when Picard arrived; then having flashbacks to some (but not all of the scenes) when Hugh and Picard trace where she is.  You'd have gotten everything you needed about Soji, Narek and Narissa without the repetitive scenes that plague the Soji stuff that made me say it was just doing time until Picard showed up.  

That said TIB was the fulcrum episode, now everything has turned and it feels like we're moving towards an end - even if Nepenthe could be seen as a bottle episode.  We get some important pieces for Soji (more so than any of her cube scenes until Narek (intentionally?) fails to killer her) and some, I think, important bits for Picard (and seeing Riker and Troi is a lot of fun as well).  Pity Hugh's part essentially wasted him; don't think he was used very well.

Enterprise "Broken Bow"

A wee bit on the 'have people bicker to bicker" side, but an enjoyable premiere episode.  Most of the cast is given just enough to do that you have a grasp of who they are, except maybe Malcolm (we know that he's distracted by new and alien things, but it wasn't made completely clear in the episode that he was their weapons and presumably their security guy).   I'd forgotten about the time travel stuff (or was my memory altered when the timeline changed? ) but it makes me wonder if, with the presence of the Temporal Cold War if post Enterprise Trek could be considered its own time-line (as I speculated in Discovery's second season, that the whole Red Angel subplot could mean that Discovery and SNW are in a different time-line; Picard could go either way since its post three time-travel stories).

[LadyCrimson]

That Obiwan series has me, for the first time, tempted to sub to Disney. Mostly because Ewan, ofc.

So I'm hoping you guys will watch it and tell me how terrible it is or something and the temptation will disappear.

[LadyCrimson]

Tried to watch Bubble. I grew bored half way through. I guess I'm not into all that parkour as a backdrop and while there were cute moments, I wasn't into the "little mermaid" aspects (or that character) either.

I also watched a couple episodes of the Epix show "From" (via Amazon Prime) and I was sort of liking it. Feels a little Twilight Zone or S. King-ish in a way. The lead actor is great in his role. But I have the feeling it's going to be kinda like Twin Peaks or Lost, in that stretch it out forever and you'll never get any actual answers (or it'll be cancelled) etc.

[Lexx]

Damn, I was looking around for "From" already but couldn't find it. Guess it's simply not (yet?) available around here, which sucks.

[LadyCrimson]

^ I think officially Epix is an America-only streaming-sub service, still. I sub to it thru Prime and YouTube has a sub option (in the US) too.